Modern research and technology have provided society with a wide variety of electronic devices. It is appreciated that some of these modern electronic devices are very powerful and useful to their users. For example, some of the electronic devices which fall into this category include: computers which occupy large office space down to computers which are held in one's hand, satellites which orbit around earth relaying a multitude of communication signals, global positioning system (GPS) devices capable of determining the specific locations of their users on the earth, cellular phones which enable their users to communicate wirelessly with other people, to name a few. Additionally, it should be appreciated that some modern electronic devices also provide entertainment to their users. For instance, some of the electronic devices which fall into this category include: portable and fixed radio receivers which provide their users music along with a wide array of different audio programming, video game consoles which challenge their users with varying situations within different virtual realities, portable and fixed compact disc (CD) players which provide music to their users, and portable and fixed televisions which provide a wide variety of visual and audio programming to their users.
Currently, in order to provide entertaining media content to the general public, there are many different ways to distribute it. For example, television content providers distribute their television content to the general public by broadcasting it via different types of communication networks (e.g., wireless, wired, or a combination of both). As such, the general public is able to receive hundreds of channels of television programming within their respective households and/or businesses via personal satellite dishes (large or small), coaxial cables, and the like.
In another example, video content providers distribute their video content to the general public by utilizing computer network infrastructures such as local area networks (LANs) and/or the Internet. Specifically, these type of computer network infrastructures typically include a main frame computer which functions as the main source for distributing video content. Furthermore, the video content source computer is connected to several designated cache server computers which also distribute video content. As such, a client computer that requests a download of video content may receive it from the video source computer or from one of the designated cache servers. Usually, if one of the cache servers is located closer to the client computer than the video source computer, that cache server provides the requested video content to the client computer. In this manner, the designated cache server computers are utilized to off-load some of the video distribution functionality performed by the video content source computer.
It should be appreciated that there are disadvantages associated with the video distribution infrastructure described above. For example, the video content source computer and designated cache servers may be overwhelmed by too many requests for video content downloads such that they cannot handle them in a timely manner. In other words, the video download response time of the video distribution infrastructure may be adversely prolonged.
Another disadvantage associated with the type of video distribution infrastructure described above is that it is usually costly to increase its distribution capacity in order to handle a larger amount of video download requests. For example, one common way to increase the distribution capacity of the video distribution infrastructure is to add more dedicated cache servers to it in order to help fulfill the download requests for video content. However, buying and properly setting up additional cache servers to handle video download requests can be expensive to a company.